Chaplain Crockett

I brought with me on this trip, as a kind of project to work on, three journals my father created when he was a Chaplain in WW II. They record his activities as a Chaplain at Fort Lewis, WA, from late 1942-June, 1944, and then with the 1314th Engineers Regiment in France from July, 1944 to June, 1945, and finally stateside again, at several camps, but mostly Camp Breckinridge, KY, until his discharge in March of 1946. I am photographing each page and studying the contents of these journals in a way I have never done before.

The Three Journals

Entry for March 10, 1944, in Journal #2

At Fort Lewis, my father was a Hospital Chaplain, and the journal for that period records sessions he had with servicemen in the hospital. He deals with a very wide variety of situations, many of them entailing problems at home, e,g, a sick wife, or an unfaithful wife who wants a divorce, or the death of a sister. Often the problem is with the Army bureaucracy, or the soldier just is sick of the Army and wants to go home.  In many instances, dad uses the American Red Cross to look into the situation, or he consults with an officer to see what can be done. Or he writes a letter. Some entries are pretty wild:

March 19, 1944: "Mrs. Bailey, dau. of Ernie ("The Barber") Lafferty, came in. Wants to be married to Bailey, to whom she has been married twice. After first marriage, he went to the Aleutians; she started divorce, married A.W.O., whose wife had started divorce; baby by this marriage; W.O.'s first wife drops divorce proceedings; marriage annulled as illegal; she was remarried to Bailey by proxy; meanwhile Bailey was sentenced by court martial to 12 months, has served 7, is now in Post Prison (en route to Turlock Prison), and they will be married while he is here." 

Dad doesn't say he performed the marriage; I doubt that he would have in this case, though he did do a lot of weddings.

By the way, "Turlock Prison" was an infamous spot. Located in Turlock, CA, it was originally built as as a fairgrounds, but from April to August, 1942, it was used as a detention center for Japanese-Americans, where they were housed in pathetically inadequate structures, their only crime being that they were of Japanese descent, and the U.S. was at war with Japan. When they were relocated to the Gila River Concentration Camp in Arizona (where they remained for the duration of the war), Turlock became one of several "Detention and Rehabilitation Centers" for GI's. "These centers were established in order to discipline and rehabilitate soldiers that violated military regulations before reinstating them for military duty." That's where Bailey was bound. 

Turlock Detention Center

Japanese-Americans arriving at Turlock, photographed by Dorothea Lange

When dad went to France with the 1314th Engineers, the nature of his chaplaincy changed. Now he was chaplain to hundreds of troops scattered over a fairly wide area, and he conducted numerous services as well as providing counseling to individual GI's who were in trouble of some kind. The 1314th Engineers followed the advancing front line and rebuilt roads and bridges destroyed in the fighting and generally did what was needed to keep open lines of supply and communication. He was not in the line of fire, but things were still risky, as this entry shows:

Sunday, August 27, 1944: "Driving out of Trevierres toward Colombiers, driver noticed French young men running across a field and glancing back over their shoulders. Turning to determine the cause of their fright, T/5 Gougis saw an object fall from a plane. An explosion followed, smoke and flame rising in a column perhaps 100 yds. high in an instant. We took it for a bomb. Thought it might have been an accident, or perhaps horseplay; decided that the thing for us was to move away. Later, returning to the scene, we found a plane burning, and were told this story by soldiers who were camping nearby and were eye-witnesses: Two planes met 4 planes (all 6 were C-47's, troop transport planes), and one banked to avoid one of the 4, and so struck his partner, knocking off the right tail piece. The injured plane crashed. The two men aboard were burned beyond recognition. The tail piece fell c. 100 yds. behind my jeep; the plane c. 300 yds. from us, some debris c. 50 yds."

I entered "1314th Engineers" into Google as a search term, and the first item to come up was a post in a website called Lest We Forget by a Phil Sammon. Phil's father, the post said, had been an officer in   Company A of the 1314th Engineers. Phil knew a little about his father's regiment, but was asking for more information. I looked in my father's journal, where he had listed the officers of Company A, and there was "Platoon Leader, 1st Lt. Paul E. Sammon." Then I looked at a group portrait of Company A that I had earlier scanned into my computer. My father had conveniently put an onion skin paper over the group photo, carefully outlined the face of every person, put a number inside each circle and then made a numbered list of names. There, just two seats away from dad, was 1st Lt. Paul E. Sammon! Now what do you think of that!

 

Company A of 1314th Engineers

 

Closeup of front row, with Chaplain Crockett on the left and 1st Lt. Sammon on the right

I thought it would be neat to contact Phil Sammon - he might like to see what I have.  He had posted his request in 2007, when he was working with the Forest Service in Ohio. A little online research revealed that he had moved to Missoula, MT, where he worked with the USFS.  A call there informed me that he had retired. The secretary was not able to give me current contact information for him, but I left a message with a colleague, and I hope to hear from him.